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Tekmira's Collaborators At The National Cancer Institute Present Preclinical Data At The Annual Meeting Of The American Association For Cancer Research (AACR)

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 10, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corporation (Nasdaq:TKMR) (TSX:TKM), a leading developer of RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics, announced that its collaboration partner, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), will present preclinical data at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in a poster session beginning at 8:00 am ET today entitled "Nanoparticle-Based Combinatorial siRNA Therapy against Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC)."

"In addition to the encouraging results from our Phase I TKM-PLK1 clinical trial that were presented yesterday at AACR, our collaborators at the NCI have identified the novel cancer genes WEE1 and CSN5 from human tumor samples, and together we have generated promising preclinical data with this combination by leveraging our expertise in siRNA design and delivery," said Dr. Mark J. Murray, Tekmira's President and CEO.

The preclinical results summarized in the poster indicate that a statistically significant decrease in tumor size was observed in the animals treated with either CSN5 siRNA or a combination of CSN5 and WEE1 siRNA. The results also indicate that the treatment does not affect the global gene expression in the surrounding liver following siRNA therapy compared to that seen in the tumor tissue, supporting the tumor-specific nature of the effect. Tekmira has an ongoing collaboration with the NCI to identify novel cancer genes for RNAi applications to meet unmet needs.

Tekmira is currently evaluating several preclinical candidates with potential in diverse therapeutic areas. The Tekmira team will continue to generate data to support the advancement of the most promising of these and expects to nominate the next product candidate for development in 2013.

The Phase I TKM-PLK1 data were presented yesterday at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013 in an oral presentation entitled "A phase I dose escalation study of TKM-080301, a RNAi therapeutic directed against PLK1, in patients with advanced solid tumors."

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